Postcard from Corsica – Boules

In the town of St Florent in the evening, men come to the town square and play boules. In the summer the sun heats the dirt square and in the evening that heat is released with each soft thud of a falling boul, landing in a puff of dust. There are arguments, sometimes as heated as the mid-day square. Voices are raised and fingers pointed within inches of noses. This is boules.

For the first few days, nobody took much notice of the young man who sat and watched the men each evening. He did not play and did not have any boule with him, probably a tourist and at best a distraction. Each evening he would sit there, watching the games. He left only when the last game had finished.

At the end of the week he approached one of the regulars and asked him, in halting French, who the best player was? The best? Easy, the Fat One, but he was no fun to play, he gloated when he won, he’d once gloated so much when he beat the local champion, an old man, that that poor old fellow had never played again.

The young man nodded.

The next evening, the first man to arrive in the town square found the young man already there. He had a set of boule and was tossing them with quiet deliberation. The metal spheres would land in a variety of patterns, grouped together or in a line. It was obvious that this was a young man of skill.

He greeted his first arrival in his tourist French, would he like a game? Just until his real friends turned up? It would be rude to refuse and the local and the young man played. The young man beat the local, but narrowly. The young man claimed beginner’s luck and explained that the game could easily have gone the other way.

More locals began turning up. One by one, the young man played them all, always winning narrowly. He was, the locals agreed, a natural, a master at placing each of those shiny metal balls exactly where he wanted them to go.

The Fat Man watched all of this silently. He was not impressed or intimidated. He knew that it did not matter how close the boule was placed to the tiny jack ball, he could still win. For the Fat Man was a violent player. Not for him the gentle artful placing of the boul. Rather, he would wait until the game had nearly concluded and blast his opponent’s boul away from the jack, leaving his own closest to small white ball.

The sun was balanced on top of the hill when the Fat One played the young man. The jack went down, the young man threw. Marvellously close. The Fat One threw, nearly as close. Again they threw. The Fat One smiled, he saw in the dirt the pattern of lines of force that would scatter this young man’s boul to the gutters of the square. The young man threw his final boul.

It landed on top of another of his, and stayed there. The men in the square were too surprised to gasp. Here, surely, was an art beyond skill. Even fifty years ago, they would have been debating burning this young man at the stake. The Fat One quivered with rage but, knowing all eyes were upon him, threw. It was a valiant effort, scattering silver balls. All except the young man’s final boul, which simply settled in the dirt, touching the jack. Smiling, the young man picked up his boul and walked out of the square.

Later, at his grandfather’s house, the young man returned the boul to their owner, an old man who used to be the local boules champion.

‘You should teach others that throw grandfather.’ The young man said. ‘You could be rich.’ The old man smiled and replied in slow French to his English grandson.

‘Not everyone has the patience or the skill, and you need to be family. Now, tell me again about the expression on the Fat One’s face when he was beaten by a tourist.’